Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2020 i Adirondack Explorer

90-Miler canoe race to change hands By Mike Lynch The three-day, 90-mile Adirondack Canoe Classic, one of the most popular events in the Adirondack Park, is set to come under new ownership by the 2021 paddling season. The nonprofit Northern Forest Canoe Trail signed a letter of intent in January to purchase the race from Brian and Grace McDonnell, who have owned and managed it for more than 20 years. The $90,000 purchase would also include the Adirondack Watershed Alliance, the organization through which the McDonnells organize their paddlesport events, and three paddling races: ’Round the Mountain and the Celebrate Paddling Invitational in Saranac Lake, and the Long Lake Long Boat Regatta. NFCT Executive Director Karrie Thomas said the nonprofit is buying the 90-Miler because it lines up with the…

On Columbus Day weekend a couple decided to climb Whiteface Mountain. They started the hike on the Connery Pond side, sometime between 1 and 2 in the afternoon. By the time they reached the top, it was raining, and, wearing only cotton clothing, they were cold. They also mistakenly thought they could get a ride down the mountain’s road. “The only useful item they really had was a cellphone,” says forest ranger Scott van Laer, who has participated in some 600 search-and-rescue missions in his 24-year career. “No headlamps, no map or even proper clothing.” Stories like these show up almost weekly in the Department of Environmental Conservation’s ranger report roundups. People regularly head into the High Peaks wearing only sneakers and T-shirts, the only map the one they’ve got…

Some parents looking for winter outdoor experiences may take their kids to the downhill ski slopes at a resort like Gore Mountain in North Creek. Others may find programs focused on children at Nordic ski centers like Lapland Lake Nordic Vacation Center in Northville. But when you start looking for backcountry ski experiences—away from organized lessons, groomed trails and snack bars—the choices get tougher. Where can you go to introduce your kids to the fun of skiing in the woods without creating an experience that is too challenging or too uncomfortable? After multiple trips to Lapland Lake, we started our backcountry efforts small, taking our daughter, Nakita, and our cross-country skis to a golf course near our Capital Region home. The hills provided some excitement and we were able to…

MORE PHOTOS Wearing a black-and-red flannel shirt, Amanda Slattery hustled behind the bar at the Burgoyne Grill at the Best Western hotel on the outskirts of Ticonderoga. She works at the lounge five nights a week in this historic town on the eastern edge of the Adirondacks. On Sundays, Slattery also pours drinks at the Knights of Columbus hall, one of the few watering holes downtown. And three afternoons during the warmer months, Slattery mixes cocktails at Emerald’s II, a seasonal restaurant. Slattery, 32, joked that she has three jobs—one for each of her children. Like her town, which trades on American history and tourism, she is getting by. Like many of her friends, relatives and neighbors, she dreams of a stronger economic future. A host of Ticonderoga believers is…

Up Yonda Farm is down-home smart. On the very edge of Lake George’s glitter and bustle, this former farmstead perches on 73 hillside acres, just where Route 9N calms into a rural highway above Bolton Landing. A fetching name for an inspiring yet unassuming environmental education center, its laid-back tag belies its savvy mission, enlightening visitors about the ecology of these northern hills, “up yonda.” On the late-winter afternoon I visited, there was a maple sugaring class open to all comers; Karin Badey, a seasoned naturalist from Luzerne, greeted me on the main house porch. “Ask me about anything; and feel free to explore the whole place,” was her welcome. I wandered between the compact buildings, most of them remnants from earlier days: the house, museum, butterfly house, auditorium, sugar…

MORE PHOTOS Standing in the dark behind his truck on a January morning, Will Madison slipped into his ski boots at Whiteface Mountain. It was just after 6 a.m. and the chairlifts wouldn't start running until 8:30. But Madison was getting an early start so he could ski up the mountain and get some turns in before the crowds arrived. "I like to get in the woods, but when you don’t have enough snow to get into the backcountry this is a really good place to go," said Madison, assistant director for St. Lawrence University's Adirondack Program. After a few minutes, Madison's friend arrived and the pair wandered off to the ski patroller's office, in a back corner of the ski resort’s main lodge. Here, they showed their uphill skiing…

In the late 1820s, a couple of citizen scientists in upstate New York were amusing their friends with the latest technological parlor trick when they hit upon something useful. An electrically charged magnet, which could magically lift scraps of metal off the floor, was also capable of pulling shards of iron from a conveyor of crushed ore. Joseph Henry of Albany, who would go on to become the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, perfected his electromagnet using iron of impeccable quality that was mined in Ironville, a dozen steep miles west of Lake Champlain’s Crown Point. That led Ironville mining entrepreneur Allen Penfield to wonder aloud if magnets might be used to simply and easily separate out the valuable iron from the rocky chaff. Henry thought so, and indeed…

YES Matt Simpson There are times when compromises must be made. When balance must be struck. When common sense must prevail. When it comes to improving cell phone service in the Adirondack Park, the time is now. Cellular coverage can no longer be considered a luxury. It is an essential part of everyday life for most people and a critical necessity for the safety of everyone who lives in or visits our region and may need the help of police, firefighters or EMTs. It is also increasingly necessary for businesses that want to locate or survive here, and for vacationers who expect to be accessible to their co-workers or family members back home. Frighteningly, that cellular lifeline still does not exist in many portions of the park. The Adirondack Park…

Few things test the resiliency of Adirondack communities like the loss of a full-service grocery store. The ways residents come together to try and fill the gap show the hardy, can-do spirit that is the core of our rural towns and villages. For examples, look to Indian Lake’s flourishing farmer’s market, and AdkAction’s farm stores in Keeseville and Port Henry, which provide access to fresh and locally made foods in places where there is no longer a supermarket. In St. Lawrence County, the greater Clifton-Fine community is facing its own challenges with food access. The region’s newest “food desert” saw the closing of the only area grocery store, the Great American store in Star Lake, at the end of 2019. Past Coverage “Coping is the best word for describing what…

For Joan Renaud, Oct. 5, 2019 was less about the journey up Mount Marshall and more about the descent. By then Marshall was the final mountain to check off on her hiking list of the 46 Adirondack High Peaks, but she was no stranger to its summit. She had been there once before, on Sept. 12, 2018, but hadn’t left the mountain in the conventional way. She had been airlifted by helicopter off the mountainside without hiking down—technically not a qualifying hike for an ADK 46er patch. It had been a rainy and cloudy day. Renaud and her friend, Brenda Tirrell, were on their “Adirondack Attack.” The two New Hampshire residents had already hiked their home state’s 48 big mountains and were now working on New York’s prized peaks. At…

A quatic invasive species don’t stop moving from water body to water body while government officials debate whether to do more to prevent their spread than simply require that boat owners take “reasonable precautions” to keep them off their vessels. Likewise, the dangers of road salt, studied first in 1990 and again in 2010, don’t change when we wait another 10 years to take action. And as the climate continues to warm, phosphorus in Lake Champlain is creating harmful cyanobacteria blooms and will continue to endanger people and damage the tourist economy until more is done to curb pollution. The Adirondack Park’s waters are threatened on all sides by road salt, invasive species, human sewage, farm runoff and relaxed federal protections—all amplified by a changing climate. The 3,000 lakes and…

Bob Liseno is quietly doing his part to keep an important Adirondack tradition alive. A few times a week he joins a classroom of 16- to 18-year-olds participating in the Franklin/Essex/Hamilton County Boards of Cooperative Educational Services program’s natural science class, which teaches Adirondack staples such as surveying, soil and tree identification, aquatic ecosystems, land use and forestry. And when Liseno comes to class, they are crafting a tongue-and-groove log lean-to. It’s 31 degrees on this January day at the back side of the Adirondack Education Center in Saranac Lake, with a dusting of snow and some ice on the ground. Three high school juniors, Tyler Yell, Cooper Grady and Logan Branch, are protected against the cold—not to mention chain saws and hammer mishaps—dressed in hard hats, work gloves, chaps…

Inside the New York State Capitol, where people in suits and heels rush back and forth and political jabber echoes in grand staircases, Betty Little’s office is a slice of North Country life. On a Wednesday in January, Little sat on her couch in the small room. She wore an evergreen suit, surrounded by hints of home—a framed landscape from the Adirondack Balloon Festival, pine cones and greenery on a side table, a poster featuring Washington County’s grassland birds. She held a printout of her day’s schedule. Her greatest accomplishments over roughly 18 years in the state Senate and seven in the state Assembly were scribbled in a few lines on the same sheet. “I think one of the things I’m most proud of is the constituent service that my…

Imagine this. You’re an Adirondack resident and a serious bicyclist. You take regular rides from your home base, and when you go on vacations, you often pile the bikes atop the car for some scenic touring at your destination. Or maybe you are a town supervisor, or a chamber- of-commerce president, somewhere in the Adirondack Park. Or you run an Adirondack inn, or a restaurant, or a bike or outdoor gear shop. One night you go to sleep, and the next thing you know, you’re sitting up in bed, staring at a large map of the Adirondack Park. You don’t know whether you’re in a dream—or how the map arrived in your bedroom—but the map looks real and has bright red lines marking rail-trail routes across the park. You don’t…